


troy fell & helen survived

by Starbursters



Category: Legion of Super-Heroes (Comics)
Genre: "what if" au, F/M, because this was my first fandom and i'm gonna enjoy it, threeboot verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 03:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbursters/pseuds/Starbursters
Summary: Nura Nal doesn't die when the Legion's plaza falls.





	troy fell & helen survived

_“How long have you been standing here?”_

The telepathic thought caught Nura off guard, and she snapped back to the present, wincing a little as her head continued to throb delicately with her persistent headache. She’d acquired the nuisance a week earlier, when Lemnos and his accomplices had brought down the Legion’s plaza. The attack had created over twenty casualties and ninety-and-a-half cases of difficult injury, with Nura being one of the injured.

Nura had broken both her shoulder and her arm, as well as bruised several ribs, when she’d been thrown about a yard’s distance, narrowly avoiding certain death as a large piece of the crumbling building had come down. She’d been so certain that she’d been about to die, and hadn’t expected to be knocked out of the way so quickly. She’d hit her head when she’d landed on the ground a couple seconds later, causing her an almost disorienting amount of pain, though, thankfully, no concussion. _“_

_"You’re one of the lucky ones,”_ Imra had told the precog when they had reunited in the Science Police’s medical center.

“Lucky,” Nura had echoed Imra. The word tasted funny on Nura’s tongue. It hadn’t felt right after the destruction of Legion Plaza, and it didn’t feel right now, a week later. As Nura turned her head to look at her telepathic teammate where she was stood a foot back, Nura couldn’t help but be reminded of the word.

“I’ve moved since this morning, don’t worry.”

Irma’s face was plain in its concern. A drawback of being a telepath with defunct vocal chords — the tone was all in the expression.

_“Tinya said she saw you having an apple earlier.”_ Imra’s brows furrowed. _“Please tell me that wasn’t your entire lunch.”_

Nura frowned. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t use our teammates to spy on me,” she retorted, unable to mask her annoyed emotion.

Imra’s face pinched with slight, and Nura’s bitterness ebbed. “I’m sorry, Imra. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Imra’s face remained pinched for a moment, before it smoothed into resignation with the telepath releasing an audible sigh. _“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have asked Tinya.”_ She lifted her head, blue eyes shiny with emotion. _“I’m just worried that you might be—“_

“—obsessing?” Nura finished almost automatically. Imra, used to Nura’s automaticity, just nodded. Nura looked away from her teammate and back to the large plane of unbreakable glass that looked into one of the Science Police’s medical center’s urgent-care facilities.

“Maybe I am obsessing, but I can’t seem to pull myself away.”

Imra watched Nura’s face for a moment longer, before turning her attention to the green patient floating in the restorative vat on the other side of the barrier.

_“He’s still not awake?”_

“Hasn’t been since the plaza fell on him.” Nura’s head throbbed at the memory. “The doctors said that his brain activity has increase by five percent since they checked last.”

Imra frowned. _“So that makes it—“_

“—about twenty-four percent brain activity,” Nura finished, voice grim. Her blue eyes were trained on the bruised face of her teammate floating in the tank.

He had an oxygen masked strapped to his face, and all sorts of medical tubes attached to his body. The doctors had to remove his extra wire enhancements when they’d first brought him into the facility, afraid that they’d potentially damage any neural networking to which the wiring was connected. It had been the first time Nura had seen Brainy without the sprocking things, and when the doctors had finally allowed Nura to see Brainy, she’d done a double-take, not recognizing her teammate for a moment. He’d just looked so…vulnerable.

It’d felt so sprocking wrong.

Nura had to resist smacking her hands against the tank’s clear casing and shouting at the Coluan to “wake the sprock up”. But she’d reigned in her torment and kept calm, watching as Querl continued to listlessly float, the scars and lines from the extensive surgeries he’d endured imprinting themselves into Nura’s memory. She would forever remember when she’d seen those wounds, open and bleeding, as Querl had laid beneath the plaza rubble, body broken from the destruction.

The precog had pulled the body from the rubble herself, begging the stars, begging the heavens, that she hadn’t lost her… She hadn’t known how to finish the thought — because what was Querl Dox to Nura? At the time, Nura hadn’t had the notion to make any serious considerations towards Querl’s importance. She hadn’t even registered the damage to her own body, until she tried to remove a chunk of concrete with her bad arm and found it useless, hanging at her side.

Legion fans — those not frozen and cowering in fear from the ordeal — had aided Nura in uncovering Querl’s body, standing back when Nura finally unearthed Querl’s blonde head, the yellow locks stained by the green of his blood. The cybernetic enhancements on his face had completely shattered to shrapnel that stuck horrifically out of the skin like splinters. Nura had tried to remove the metal, fingers coming away green.

“Brainy!” She’d shouted. “Brainy!” But the Coluan had remained unresponsive in Nura’s hands. “You egotistical, Machiavelli-aspiring bastard!” She’d shaken him, growing angrier and angrier by the second. “You can’t just sacrifice yourself for me like this!”

It was then that Lyle had appeared and he’d stopped Nura from doing any potential damage.

“Dream Girl! Stop!”

The boy had almost been hit to the face when Nura had swung herself around, ready to shield her fallen teammate’s body from any further threat. Luckily, Lyle has good reflexes, and had only sustained a bruised cheek from the swing. He’d clutched his cheek when he’d ducked down, a child-like expression of hurt on his face from the pain, and tears of a different source in his eyes.

“God, Nura!” He’d hissed, concerned with his pain for only a split second before he registered the body in Nura’s arms. “God! Brainy!”

Nura had shouted at the teenage boy desperately. “Help me, Lyle, please! I can’t get him to respond to me!”

Lyle had failed to respond for a minute, eyes riveted upon the broken face of his mentor-slash-reluctant-friend, disbelieving that this was really happening. It wasn’t until Nura had shouted his name again that he’d snapped to reality.

“He’s bleeding pretty bad, Nura. God. What happened—“

“He got hit when the plaza fell,” Nura had interrupted.

“But—his forceshield—“

“—didn’t have enough power to shield him.” Querl had used most of the power to throw Nura out of the way of certain death. He’d put her life before his own — the arrogant bastard.

“I didn’t see this coming,” Nura had whispered when the SP's medic officers had arrived. They’d taken Querl from Nura’s one good arm, and suddenly Nura had felt her entire world violently turn. She hadn’t known what had possessed her next; only that she’d taken off across the plaza, flying as fast as her flight ring let her, the only thought in her aching head being that she needed to make Praetor Lemnos pay for what he had done.

She’d near killed the bastard when the others had found her, a blaster in her hand, the barrel digging into Lemnos’s side, and Nura’s foot against the man’s throat, putting an overwhelming amount of pressure on the villain’s windpipe.

It’d been Atom Girl who had pulled Nura away, appearing out of nowhere to pull Nura away before the precog could do something she’d later regret.

Nura hadn’t seen the sprocking bastard since the Science Police had taken him away. As soon as he’d disappeared into armored custody, Nura had collapsed, her body no longer able to ignore the pain and exhaustion she’d sustained without the rush of adrenaline fueled by her anger. She’d later woken up in a bed in the medical center, Imra at her side. Her body had hurt all over, and her arm and ribs had been bandaged heavily.

_“Saturn’s rings,”_ Imra had sworn then. Now, watching Nura watch their critically injured teammate, Imra swore again.

_“I thought you said that you didn’t like him like that?”_

Nura didn’t say anything for a moment. Her lips creased slightly, and her chin turned down.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. It was an honest admittance. “I didn’t see this coming.”


End file.
